News

Phew, long time without any new releases. Let's get to the meat of this!

We have finally managed to get our hands on a copy of Sky Fighter (보라매 전사) for the Samsung Gam*Boy / Master System, a shooting game from 1990. The game was discussed in HG101 article on Clover Soft, showing a single screen from an advertisement. It was apparently released on both MSX and SMS, but up to this day the MSX version hasn't surfaced. This SMS dump of the game is the first version available on the internet. The vertical shooter is reminiscent of Aleste / Power Strike with weapon changes, stationary shooting bases. Even though it isn't as good as most official releases and has horrendous music, it is quite playable and has a place among the higher quality original Korean titles.

Our second dump today is Cave Dude for the Game Gear, an unreleased prototype among others Innovation Tech tried to get released on the Game Gear in the US. The game runs in Master Syste compatibility mode. Somehow it appears that a few of those Innovation Tech cartridges have been doing the round among collectors. The game was also developed in Korean and known as Toto World 3 there, and is also best known as a part of the Australian 4 Pak All Action compilation. Our new dump today is actually pretty much identical to the version in 4 Pak All Action but as extra copyright and other information that were blanked out for the compilation.

We're not done yet! We have got a Prototype of Action Fighter for the Master System, that we are labelling [v0] in contrast with the retail [v1] and [v2] versions. The prototype has yet to be studied for differences, but one interesting thing is that its High Score table contains names that were removed in the final release:

(on the left, the new prototype) (on the right, the retail version)

With so little known about the developers behind some of those early games, the presence of SETSUO, WAKIHARA, KAWAMURA, FIGHTER, HANEDA, KENJI may be of interest to game historians.

Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap Remake & Monster Boy

Two unusual but exciting news! You may have heard them elsewhere or on our forum but we thought it'd be worth posting a proper front-page news blurb here.

(1)
Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap is getting an official modern remake!.. created by none other than yours truly. I have opened a small studio with my friend Ben Fiquet in Paris and we started working on this project which got picked by a publisher (DotEmu) and we untangled the licensing to do it legally and release it.

The game will be for Consoles/PC at least and we haven't announced a release date yet.

(2)
Another Parisian game studio, Game Atelier, are creating a game called Monster Boy, which is designed like a spiritual and semi-official sequel to the Wonder Boy/Monster World series, which draws lots of inspiration and contents from The Dragon's Trap and Wonder Boy in Monster World.

The game will also be released on various Consoles/PC and is planned for release in 2016.

H.E.R.O. / Qīng fēng xiá (青蜂俠) for the Aaronix SG-1000 II. A variant of the previously released version which had a Chinese logo. This one has an English logo following a pattern where many games were released with both sort of logos. This is one of my favorite SG-1000 game, check it out. I have a personal bias as this is perhaps the first SG-1000 game I have played (back in 1988 in Cairo, SC-3000 and software were on sale there for some reason).

We also have not one, not two but three prototypes of E-SWAT for the Master System. Back when it proudly said on the title screen THE ULTIMATE FACTOR IN THE BATTLE AGAINST CRIME followed by a typo on the difficulty selection screen. I got hold of those a long time ago but they stayed unsorted for a while. One of the dump was kindly donated by Arnold. Paul has taken the time to figure out their ordering (read his notes). Any other notable differences?

Hong Kil Dong (KR), Paperboy 2 [Proto] (GG)

Quoting Derboo who extensively researched Korean gaming:
An autoscrolling run 'n gun based on the traditional Korean story Hong Gildong-jeon. The titular hero has to fight ghosts and demons, on his way to the boss (which he fights after mounting a cloud) in each stage he can also open treasure chests, which contain several powerups.

This game offers a good opportunity to take a brief look at the original tale, as it's only the first of many games that are based off or reference it. Hong Gildong is the son of a Yangban, the Korean gentry during the Joseon era (1392 to 1910). Yet he finds himself at the lower end of the caste system because his mother was a mere concubine. So despite being extraordinarily gifted, he has no perspective of social advancement, and isn't even allowed to refer to his father as such. Because he is marked as cursed, his family attempts to have him killed, but he flees and becomes kind of a Korean Robin Hood. At the end of several adventures, he conquers the demon-infested island Yuldo and establishes a nation without social discrimination. The tale is popularly attributed to the 16./17. century scholar Heo Gyun, which is not entirely undisputed among historians of Korean literature.

The game has been originally advertised by a company called Saeron System, but at least the Master System version was published by Clover in the end. Who actually developed the game is not known. The game is extremely rare, despite it being a giveaway at magazine raffles for years.

Note: if you are using MEKA, the game only started functioning properly from MEKA 0.8x 2015-05-01 build. It uses the R register during boss fight, which was incorrectly emulated by MEKA up to this version. The game will probably function correctly on other emulators such as MESS or Emulicious or Dega Fusion. Thanks to segmtfault, Paul Baker and Calindro for helping me with getting the game running on Meka! (see discussion thread).

WildSnake for Game Gear (Unreleased) & an amazing 18th year competition lineup!

March 27 was our 18th birthday and we've got a bunch of gifts for you!

James (dyer60) contacted me a few weeks ago saying he may have stumbled on an unreleased game as part of buying an old lot. He was generous enough to allow me to borrow the board and dump its EPROM for a release here, coinciding with our anniversary week. Fast forward and by March 28th I received it from him and dumped the game: WildSnake! A new game for the Game Gear :)

Developed in 1993-1994 by Bullet-Proof Software, a company specialized in puzzle games (and namely all the Tetris spinoffs on the Super Famic*m), WildSnake eventually wasn't released on Sega systems. A Megadrive prototype surfaced at some point and we are pleased to release the Game Gear version today.

WildSnake is a "dropping-block" puzzle game featuring wiggling snakes that the player can controls. Snakes can eat each others when their color and pattern matches, and the player has to guide them as they fall into the board. The movement of snake creates a rather mesmerizing game.

The game has four modes: Easy, Normal, Hard and King-Cobra. The later "King-Cobra" mode provides challenges that you have to pass in order to beat the game. The game is unfortunately relatively easy and doesn't seem to offer a lot of challenge, which could have been a reason for it being pulled out before release. Regardless, it received the marketing treatment of being advertised by Alexey Pajitnov himself (according to the credits he didn't really work on the game). See the advertisement mentioning the Game Gear and Megadrive releases.